Agenda of the Overview Talk

High Level Overview

What is ROS?

Who made it?

Why do we use it?

Middleware Aspects

Software Structure

Client Libraries

2
 High Level Overview
What is ROS?

An Operating System like Windows, GNU/Linux?

A Software Distribution?

A Middleware? IPC

A Set of Libraries?
App App App

App ROS App

Ubuntu

Hardware 3

While ROS can be seen as an operating system – it “manages the computer

hardware and provides common services for efficient execution of various
application software”. However, it is not on the same level as Windows or
GNU/Linux, as it is actually based on Ubuntu and comes with additional drivers,
functionality and a software infrastructure for the operation of robots. Therefore
it is not an self-sustained OS, but an add-on to an existing OS.
ROS is of course also a software distribution. It comes with tools to install,
remove and manage ROS applications and software projects. It can deal with
dependencies on a binary or a source code level. ROS applications include a
robot simulator, 3D Visualization Software and tools to analyze interprocess
communication.
Another role of ROS is as a middleware for applications. See later slide.
ROS also provides a set of libraries and according APIs. A set of these is
included in ROS programs to make the programs part of the ROS infrastructure,
e.g., for using the interprocess communication or the parameter server.

From ros.org (http://www.ros.org/wiki/ROS/Introduction):

“ROS currently only runs on Unix-based platforms. Software for ROS is
primarily tested on Ubuntu and Mac OS X systems, though the ROS community
has been contributing support for Fedora, Gentoo, Arch Linux and other Linux
platforms.
While a port to Microsoft Windows for ROS is possible, it has not yet been fully
explored. You can find updates on our current progress, on the Windows page. “
High Level Overview
Why do we use ROS?

Great functionality

Middleware (this session)

Development tools (2nd Session)

Advanced libraries (3rd Session)

Hardware drivers

Large scientific community

A lot of state-of-the-art software available

Easy to exchange/integrate/build-upon existing projects

Open source (mostly BSD)

Actively developed by full-time staff

To stop reinventing the wheel...

5
 6

“The primary goal of ROS is to support code reuse in robotics research and
development.” – ros.org
 ROS - a Middleware for Robots

“Middleware is a software that connects

software components or applications.”

Framework for interprocess communication

Boosts modularization

Enables transparent distribution of software
in a network

In complex tasks (and robot operation is complex per se) the required
functionality can increase tremendously: components for sensor control, actuator
control, processing of sensor data, localization, mapping, reckognition and
tracking of humans or objects, navigation and motion planning with collision
avoidance.
Some of these tasks have to be executed on the robot itself, some (computation
intensive, but low bandwidth i/o) may be distributed to computers connected by
network.
 ROS - a Middleware for Robots

Example: Communication on the Internet

DNS Request DNS Information

DNS Server

DNS Reply (Host IP)

HTTP Request

Web Browser Web Server

HTTP Reply HTML

8

The user needs to know what information (which file) it wants from whom (the
web address)
The web browser needs to know how to to find the web address and how to
handle the information (how to display HTML)
 ROS - a Middleware for Robots

Interprocess Communication Using ROS

Subscribe Topic Advertise Topic

ROS Master

Host+Port

Topic Request

Viewer Node Hokuyo Node

Topic Stream LaserScan

9

The programmer needs to know what information (the topic) it wants from whom
(which program)
The ROS master provides the means to find and connect to those programs.
ROS also defines how interfaces (data types) are defined, and provides
functionality for serialization and transportation between different nodes
(programs). Nodes can be located on different computers and written in different
programming languages.
 ROS - a Middleware for Robots

12

On a real robot, the communication network soon becomes complex

 ROS - a Middleware for Robots
There is more to it...

(De-)Serialization under the hood

Central multi-level logging facilities

Service calls, preemptible actions

Central time

13

The Serialization procedures even provide a feature checking for compatibility of

the message definition.
The central time is important in this context, as it lets you play back real data
from some other point in time while in simulation.
 Agenda of the Overview Talk

High Level Overview

What is ROS?

Who made it?

Why do we use it?

Middleware Aspects

Software Structure

Client Libraries

15

Software Structure
The first slide of the middleware section states how a middleware helps to build
modular software for easier reuse of components. Also it states that the number
of required components can grow tremendously.
While the modularization protects us from highly complex monolithic
applications that are difficult to understand, debug, adapt or reuse, the complexity
of the task is still present in the number of components. Therefore, as in
operating systems, it is important that the software components are structured in
a comprehensible way.

Client Libraries
The last section will explain what makes a program a ROS-node.
 ROS – Software Distribution

Software Hierarchy

Release – collection of stacks and packages

Stacks – a full application suite

Package – software (and interface
definition) to solve a specific task

Node – An executable with some useful
functionality

Message/Service/Action – Interface
definitions

16

A rough Comparison:
KDE 4.3 – Release
Kontact – Stack
Kmail – Package
IMAP-plugin – Node
IMAP RFC – Message/Service Definition
In contrast to desktop application development, separable components are not
integrated into a monolithic binary (or loaded as plugins), but implemented as
individual executables that communciate via the middleware. This is more
related to the unix philosophy of having small specialized tools, that perform a
particular task very well, e.g. ls, sed, wget, tar...
This makes it easier to exchange small parts to adapted the software to a new task
or a new state-of-the-art in research.
 ROS – Software Distribution

C-Turtle
August 2010

Boxturtle
March 2010
Diamondback
Early 2011

Releases 17

From ros.org (http://www.ros.org/wiki/ROS/Introduction)

Releases
The core ROS system, along with useful tools and libraries are regularly released
as a ROS Distribution. This distribution is similar to a Linux distribution and
provides a set of compatible software for others to use and build upon. There are
currently two releases: C Turtle (August 2010) and Box Turtle (March 2010).
 ROS – Software Distribution

~1700 ~49

230+
18

Examples for ROS Applications:

- Visualization
- Calibration
- Simulation
- Synchronous Localization and Mapping (SLAM)
- Visual SLAM
- Articulated Objects
- Object Recognition
- Grasping
- PR2 billiard
- PR2 “beer me”
 ROS – Software Distribution

Binary distribution via dpkg/apt

Source distribution via version control systems

Tools for dependency resolution

Fetch binaries from apt-repository

Fetch source code from version control

Recursively build dependencies

Central documentation wiki: ros.org/wiki

Installation instructions & download mirror:

http://ros.informatik.uni-freiburg.de
19

Willow Garage's ROS package repository for Ubuntu is at

http://code.ros.org/packages/ros/ubuntu
We have a mirror at
http://ros.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/packages/ros/ubuntu
See the mentioned web page for instructions.
There is a Howto for the ROS wiki: http://www.ros.org/wiki/About%20ros.org

From ros.org (http://www.ros.org/wiki/ROS/Concepts)

- Distributions: ROS Distributions are collections of versioned stacks that you
can install. Distributions play a similar role to Linux distributions: they make it
easier to install a collection of software, and they also maintain consistent
versions across a set of software.
- Repositories: ROS relies on a federated network of code repositories, where
different institutions can develop and release their own robot software
components.
- The ROS Wiki: The ROS community Wiki is the main forum for documenting
information about ROS. Anyone can sign up for an account and contribute their
own documentation, provide corrections or updates, write tutorials, and more.
 ROS – Client Libraries

What makes a program a ROS node?

Usage of a client library

C++ and Python

Octave/Matlab, Lisp, Java and Lua
(experimental)

You can implement your own

A client library embeds a program in the
ROS interprocess communication network
(i.e. attaches it to the middleware)

20

At a minimum, a client library MUST:

* implement the slave side of the master/slave API. This involves managing an
XML/RPC server, and issuing and responding to XML/RPC requests.
* handle node-to-node transport negotiation and connection setup. A client
library may only support a subset of the possible transport mechanisms, most
likely ROS/TCPROS
* handle transport-specific serialization and deserialization of messages.

A client library SHOULD also:

* parse command-line Remapping Arguments. A node that cannot do this will
not be reconfigurable.
* Subscribe to a simulated Clock
* publish debugging messages to rosout

In addition, client libraries generally offer other features, such as:

* object representation of message types
* event loop for connection servicing
* user callback invocation on message receipt
–
From http://www.ros.org/wiki/Implementing%20Client%20Libraries
 ROS – Client Libraries
How does it look like? In Python:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import roslib; roslib.load_manifest('beginner_tutorials')
! import rospy
from std_msgs.msg import String

def talker():
pub = rospy.Publisher('chatter', String)
! rospy.init_node('talker')
while not rospy.is_shutdown():
str = "hello world %s"%rospy.get_time()
rospy.loginfo(str)
pub.publish(String(str))
rospy.sleep(1.0)

if __name__ == '__main__':
try:
talker()
except rospy.ROSInterruptException: pass 21

Yellow Block: Use ROS Client Library

Blue Block: Definition of the Node
Red Block: Start the Node

The first two lines with the exclamation mark are responsible for making the
basic ROS functionality available for the remaining python code.
The second exclamation mark signifies the lines connecting the program to ROS

More details about programming with ROS will be given in a later talk.